Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan has
said that his upcoming film Matthias & Maxime is “not
gay” but “life.”
Dolan wrote, directed and stars in the
film, which this week had its world premiere at the Cannes Film
Festival.
The film follows a group of friends in
their late 20s.
Variety
wrote: “On a weekend away with their all-male crew of longtime
friends, crisp lawyer Matthias (played by Gabriel D’Almeida Fritas)
and the more overtly damaged, hard-up Maxime (Dolan) are inveigled
into acting in a student short directed by a pal’s bratty younger
sister; only once they’ve committed are they told that the film
requires them to kiss. Reluctantly, anxiously, they go ahead with it,
their friends jeering from the sidelines; Dolan, acting as his own
editor as usual, sharply cuts to black before their lips touch. A
kiss is just a kiss, maybe, but Matthias & Maxime has a
little more baggage to unpack before we get there.”
“As it turns out, the men have kissed
before,” the outlet added.
Deadline said that the men
“begin to question their true feelings” after kissing.
“This film is not gay, it's life,”
Dolan
said at the film's press conference at Cannes. “We never talk
about heterosexual films. 'Oh, I saw this great heterosexual love
story.' For me, it's not a story of homosexuality or gay love.
Ultimately, I don't think that the two protagonists are aware that it
is gay love. It's love.”
Dolan's previous seven films have won
many awards at Cannes.